You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Octave MirbeauSource:Torture Garden
Link to full quote: Quote #354 from Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau.
Are you far too depressed now even to answer the phone?
I guess you just want to
Shave your head, have a drink, and be left alone.
Is that too much to ask?Submitted on Friday, October 16, 2009 - 12:09 — GabrielleWho Said It?:of MontrealSource:Cato as a Pun
Link to full quote: Quote #2384 from Cato as a Pun by of Montreal.
Is anybody even there
who doesn't just pretend to care
This time I need to know - are you there?
Does anybody think they can
Begin to even understand
This time I need to know - are you there?Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:OleanderSource:Are You There?
Link to full quote: Quote #522 from Are You There? by Oleander.
So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:one of the engineers of the Panama Canal
Link to full quote: Quote #17 by one of the engineers of the Panama Canal.
Throw your life away,
It will come back in the end
If you still believe,
But you wish not to pretend.Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:OnesidezeroSource:Tapwater
Link to full quote: Quote #269 from Tapwater by Onesidezero.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:29 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar Levant
Link to full quote: Quote #713 by Oscar Levant.
It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar Levant
Link to full quote: Quote #387 by Oscar Levant.
"If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you are incomplete."
Submitted on Friday, August 7, 2009 - 18:16 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:The Picture of Dorian Gray
Link to full quote: Quote #2329 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
Submitted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 - 17:00 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:The Picture of Dorian Gray
Link to full quote: Quote #2265 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:31 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:De Profundis
Link to full quote: Quote #2154 from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde.
Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse the rhymes are, the most picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:The Picture of Dorian Gray
Link to full quote: Quote #2080 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:The Picture of Dorian Gray
Link to full quote: Quote #2082 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
....There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion, and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that-perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar WildeSource:The Picture of Dorian Gray
Link to full quote: Quote #2027 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar Wilde
Link to full quote: Quote #1999 from The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Fortnightly Review by Oscar Wilde.
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Oscar Wilde
Link to full quote: Quote #1968 from The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Fortnightly Review by Oscar Wilde.
